Civility

[Walter Bright]

Thanks for your kind words, Don! And thanks for recounting your success story 
with converting C to D.

Frankly, it has a lot to do with marketing. We're all engineers here, not 
marketers, and it shows.

Since you brought up the music business, it's the same thing. It's only 
partially a meritocracy. The rest is skill at marketing, packaging, and 
promotion. Even The Beatles languished in obscurity until they met Epstein.

My own C compiler did poorly until I partnered with John Haggins, a born 
marketer. Wow, what a difference he made!

I've known many engineers over the years who created very nice products. They'd 
come and complain to me that there was no uptake, what should they do? I replied 
that they needed marketing and promotion, and I'd outline things they needed to 
do (like write articles, give presentations at conferences, etc.).

None of them would do this. Several had the attitude that it was unethical to do 
any marketing and promotion. The rest just didn't want to make the effort. All 
wound up very discouraged and bitter.

Remember that movie "Field of Dreams"? To have a successful baseball field, 
"build it and they'll come". That's a pernicious lie. Things don't happen that 
way. Do you think Hollywood did no marketing and promotion for "FoD"? Of course 
they did! Lots of it.

Yes, we in the D community do do marketing and promotion. It's just that we're 
up against other communities that are very good at it.

P.S. Yes, I know there are products that took off with zero marketing and 
promotion. They are very, very rare.